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NUMBERS: CHAPTER
11-13
NUMBERS: CHAPTER
11
The People
Complain
1 Now the people became like those who complain
of adversity in the hearing of the LORD; and
when the LORD heard it, His anger was
kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among
them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.
2 The people therefore cried out to Moses, and
Moses prayed to the LORD and the fire died out.
3 So the name of that place was called Taberah,
because the fire of the LORD burned among them.
4 The rabble who were among them had greedy
desires; and also the sons of Israel wept again and said, "Who will
give us meat to eat?
5 "We remember the fish which we used to eat
free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions
and the garlic,
6 but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing
at all to look at except this manna."
7 Now the manna was like coriander seed,
and its appearance like that of bdellium.
8 The people would go about and gather it
and grind it between two millstones or beat it in the
mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its
taste was as the taste of cakes baked with oil.
9 When the dew fell on the camp at night, the
manna would fall with it.
The Complaint
of Moses
10 Now Moses heard the people weeping
throughout their families, each man at the doorway of his tent; and
the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly, and
Moses was displeased.
11 So Moses said to the LORD,
"Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found
favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people
on me?
12 "Was it I who conceived all this people? Was
it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, 'Carry them
in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which
You swore to their fathers'?
13 "Where am I to get meat to give to all this
people? For they weep before me, saying, 'Give us meat that we may eat!'
14 "I alone am not able to carry all this people,
because it is too burdensome for me.
15 "So if You are going to deal thus with me,
please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do
not let me see my wretchedness."
Seventy Elders
to Assist
16 The LORD therefore
said to Moses, "Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel,
whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and
bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there
with you.
17 "Then I will come down and speak with you
there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him
upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so
that you will not bear it all alone.
18 "Say to the people, 'Consecrate yourselves
for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the ears
of the LORD, saying, "Oh that someone would give
us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt." Therefore the LORD
will give you meat and you shall eat.
19 'You shall eat, not one day, nor two days,
nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days,
20 but a whole month, until it comes out of your
nostrils and becomes loathsome to you; because you have rejected the
LORD who is among you and have wept before Him,
saying, "Why did we ever leave Egypt?" ' "
21 But Moses said, "The people, among whom I
am, are 600,000 on foot; yet You have said, 'I will give them meat,
so that they may eat for a whole month.'
22 "Should flocks and herds be slaughtered for
them, to be sufficient for them? Or should all the fish of the sea be
gathered together for them, to be sufficient for them?"
23 The LORD said to Moses,
"Is the LORD'S power limited?
Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not."
24 So Moses went out and told the people
the words of the LORD. Also, he gathered seventy
men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent.
25 Then the LORD came
down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was
upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the
Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it
again.
26 But two men had remained in the camp;
the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit
rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered,
but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp.
27 So a young man ran and told Moses and said,
"Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp."
28 Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant
of Moses from his youth, said, "Moses, my lord, restrain them."
29 But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for
my sake? Would that all the LORD'S
people were prophets, that the LORD would put
His Spirit upon them!"
30 Then Moses returned to the camp, both
he and the elders of Israel.
The Quail
and the Plague
31 Now there went forth a wind from the
LORD and it brought quail from the sea, and let
them fall beside the camp, about a day's journey on this side
and a day's journey on the other side, all around the camp and about
two cubits deep on the surface of the ground.
32 The people spent all day and all night and
all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered
ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around
the camp.
33 While the meat was still between their teeth,
before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was
kindled against the people, and the LORD struck
the people with a very severe plague.
34 So the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah,
because there they buried the people who had been greedy.
35 From Kibroth-hattaavah the people set out
for Hazeroth, and they remained at Hazeroth.
NUMBERS: CHAPTER
12
The Murmuring
of Miriam and Aaron
1 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because
of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a Cushite
woman);
2 and they said, "Has the LORD
indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?"
And the LORD heard it.
3 (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than
any man who was on the face of the earth.)
4 Suddenly the LORD said
to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, "You three come out to the tent of
meeting." So the three of them came out.
5 Then the LORD came down
in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called
Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward,
6 He said,
"Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you,
I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in
a vision.
I shall speak with him in a dream.
7 "Not so, with My servant Moses,
He is faithful in all My household;
8 With him I speak mouth to mouth,
Even openly, and not in dark sayings,
And he beholds the form of the LORD.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant, against Moses?"
9 So the anger of the LORD
burned against them and He departed.
10 But when the cloud had withdrawn from over
the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow.
As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.
11 Then Aaron said to Moses, "Oh, my lord, I
beg you, do not account this sin to us, in which we have acted
foolishly and in which we have sinned.
12 "Oh, do not let her be like one dead, whose
flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother's womb!"
13 Moses cried out to the LORD,
saying, "O God, heal her, I pray!"
14 But the LORD said to
Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her
shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the
camp, and afterward she may be received again."
15 So Miriam was shut up outside the camp for
seven days, and the people did not move on until Miriam was received
again.
16 Afterward, however, the people moved
out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.
NUMBERS: CHAPTER
13
Spies View
the Land
1 Then the LORD spoke
to Moses saying,
2 "Send out for yourself men so that they may
spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of
Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers' tribes, every
one a leader among them."
3 So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran
at the command of the LORD, all of them men who
were heads of the sons of Israel.
4 These then were their names: from the
tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur;
5 from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of
Hori;
6 from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh;
7 from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of
Joseph;
8 from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of
Nun;
9 from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of
Raphu;
10 from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son
of Sodi;
11 from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of
Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi;
12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli;
13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of
Michael;
14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son
of Vophsi;
15 from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.
16 These are the names of the men whom Moses
sent to spy out the land; but Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.
17 When Moses sent them to spy out the
land of Canaan, he said to them, "Go up there into the Negev; then go
up into the hill country.
18 "See what the land is like, and whether the
people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few
or many.
19 "How is the land in which they live, is it
good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they
like open camps or with fortifications?
20 "How is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there
trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of
the land." Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.
21 So they went up and spied out the land
from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath.
22 When they had gone up into the Negev, they
came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of
Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)
23 Then they came to the valley of Eshcol
and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and
they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates
and the figs.
24 That place was called the valley of Eshcol,
because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there.
The Spies'
Reports
25 When they returned from spying out
the land, at the end of forty days,
26 they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron
and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness
of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the
congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.
27 Thus they told him, and said, "We went in
to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk
and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 "Nevertheless, the people who live in the
land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large;
and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
29 "Amalek is living in the land of the Negev
and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the
hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side
of the Jordan."
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before
Moses and said, "We should by all means go up and take possession of
it, for we will surely overcome it."
31 But the men who had gone up with him said,
"We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong
for us."
32 So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad
report of the land which they had spied out, saying, "The land through
which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants;
and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.
33 "There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons
of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in
our own sight, and so we were in their sight." |
